


One Right Can Still Make Two Wrongs

by ProtoNeoRomantic



Series: I Want Another First Kiss [41]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Airports, Alcohol, Break Up, Emotional Hurt, Episode: s04e09 Something Blue, Episode: s06e08 Tabula Rasa, F/F, F/M, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Giles leaving, Home, Loneliness, Magic, Present Tense, Sad Goodbye, Unhealthy Relationships, post-9/11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 18:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15248988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary: A first kiss Willow and Giles might have shared in Season Six, because even if the time isn't right, there might never be a better one. (6 of 7)





	One Right Can Still Make Two Wrongs

A ride to the airport. LAX. Two and a half to three hours depending on traffic. With all the history between them, with all that history coming to an end; it's a small thing to ask, a small thing to offer, this little sliver of borrowed time. Willow jumps at it.

Tara has already finished packing. She's gone. Gone gone. A lot less than half of everything is missing from their room, but it feel as empty as the bare mattress in the stripped clean room where Oz never slept again. She is someplace not-here.

Dawn is here, weeping and silently angry. Torn apart. Again. God only knows where Buffy is. As usual.

“Yeah, sure, Giles. I can give you a ride, no problem.”

They talk in the car. Not real talking. Deliberately light. Carefully cheerful. They talk about the times they've each flown before. They cherry pick funny stories from far enough back in each of there pasts to avoid any mention of the five years they have spent standing shoulder to shoulder against the forces of darkness and taking up huge spaces in each other's lives.

Empty spaces now, or soon to be. There are so many empty spaces.

The Airport is a madhouse. Nothing like it was a few weeks earlier when the whole gang had rushed to the boarding gate to see Giles off whether he liked it or not.

Now there are uniformed men with guns. Long, tangled, confusing lines everywhere. No one but ticketed passengers allowed past the checkpoints. All in reaction to another small apocalypse that has gone almost unnoticed in their tiny word with Buffy at it's center.

Thankfully, Giles is not checking a bag, making due with a small carry-on, sending the rest ahead. They have time for a quick drink in the tiny bar outside the secured area.

It's odd. Sitting there drinking with Giles. Scotch for him and some kind of daiquiri related thing for her. Two adults. Over twenty-one.

His plane is delayed, pushing back the need to hurry and get through security. Turning it into a need for company to pass the time he must spend waiting here. Willow stays to pass the time. Time passes.

They may be on their second or third round of drinks when they begin to talk about the years they've been together. What they've meant to each other. The ways in which he has helped to shape her and in which she has caused him to revise his already long settled ways.

They are definitely on their fourth and final round when Willow admits what she now realizes she has been working up to admitting all along. “To be honest, I've always wondered...” here her liquid courage almost fails her. But in an hour he will be gone. Gone gone. There will never be another chance.

“Yes?” Giles prompts her encouragingly. Probably having no idea what he might be encouraging. As in days of old, Willow finds that words are failing her. It's hard to say anything witty. Or at all. She can't do this with words.

Instead she leans in, her head tilted at a slight angle. There is a moment. A hesitation. His soft green eyes are filled with gentleness and agony. But also with desire.

He leans in at last, closing his eyes the way women do in movies; and he is kissing her. Real kisses. Not just affectionate. Passionate. Intense. Hungry. Lonely.

It goes on for maybe half a minute, and then they pull apart. It feels like being stabbed. His eyes say he feels it too, but probably not as much.

“I can't stay,” he says gently, countering her unspoken argument.

“Then I'll come with you,” Willow offers, somewhere between insisting and begging. She tries to tell herself it doesn't sound ridiculous. Or desperate.

His eyes give her a regretful but firm 'no'. He brushes a stray wisp of hair back from her face. The gesture is affectionate but subtly dismissive. In it's small way it puts them back in the position of an adult and a young person, if not quite a child.

“I am glad,” he admits, “that in some small way we got to share this feeling that has been growing between us for so long. Glad it hasn't gone completely unacknowledged. But that doesn't mean our lives can be fitted together. You have your own life here; going to university, fighting evil. Now I have to go and see if I can find mine.”

A dozen different counterpoints come to Willow's mind at once, but they all stick in her throat. She feels a little dizzy. Four drinks is a lot more than her usual. It occurs to her that she will be waiting here alone for several hours before she is able to drive home.

Somewhere near the confluence of realizing that Giles has given no thought to what keeping him company these last two hours will cost her and trying to imagine explaining to her mother that she has flown off to England with a man easily twice her age without even withdrawing from school, she sees it.

It's just no good. Even without Tara, her life is in Sunnydale. It always has been. It always will be. She chose UC Sunnydale over Oxford, and it certainly wasn't for their curriculum. It was to defend her home. Her home still needs defending.

The man sitting across from her is an alien. He flew in from another world. To do a job. A job that is done. And now _he_ wants to go home. The strain of staying here so long is wearing on him already. He said as much more than a year ago.

Willow squeezes Giles's hand. “I'll miss you,” she says.

“So will I,” he assures her, gently squeezing back. At the same moment, they both lean in and share one last small kiss. There feelings are in sync if nothing else about their lives is.

Willow watches Giles go, heading off to the screening line with his carry-on. She can't stand the thought of sitting here another hour or two sobering up. Instead, she enchants her car, giving it the ability to find it's own way home, the way a horse would. At least one thing is certain, whatever her personal feelings for Giles, she is certainly able to provide all of the mystical support that Buffy needs.


End file.
